Eight candidates, including two incumbents, are running for three open seats on City Council, and four are running to be mayor. The latter group rounded out the second half of the forum, which was hosted by WPHM and the Blue Water Area Chamber of Commerce.

“In all honesty, I don’t know if it’s time for a new mayor,” Pastor Tray Smith said, spurring some laughter in the room.

It was the final question of the night, and Smith, who is challenging nine-year incumbent Mayor Pauline Repp with two others, recalled a statement that inspired him to run. An analogy made about combating the opioid crisis, he said he wanted to remind the city of the human factor — those who are affected.

“People aren’t products. We aren’t dollars and cents,” Smith said. “… This seat needs to represent all people and give all people hope.” If not a new mayor, he said, then “I think we just need a new perspective to encourage people,” which he said he could provide.

City Councilman Scott Worden and Garth Gurnsey are also running for mayor.

Gurnsey brought up a historical figure — Frederick C. Sherman, a decorated naval officer from World War II who was from Port Huron — who he doesn’t believe most people know about. Earlier, he had reiterated a concern that Repp hasn’t been a member of the International Maritime Association, which he is.

Worden said he’s picked up a lot of experience in serving the community for two years of his first term. His work in the private sector, he said — he runs Worden Insurance in Marysville — and his hope to keep serving led to why he believed Port Huron needed a new mayor. He said he didn’t want people’s voices to be suppressed.

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Mayoral candidate Scott Worden speaks at a forum Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018 at the Municipal Office Center in Port Huron. Worden, a current city councilmember, is one of three candidates challenging incumbent Pauline Repp.(Photo11: Brian Wells/Times Herald)

“Hundreds and hundreds of people who have communicated with me in my council term so far, and I’m not afraid to share it,” Worden said. He also called into question Repp’s voting record at meetings, saying, “I don’t have to say yes to everything.”

Repp responded, “Voting no is not a qualifying factor. And yes, I have many conversations with the city manager before he brings something forward to us.”

She said she works with officials and other leaders outside of regular meetings and belongs to a number of organizations to help represent Port Huron. Repp said she spends at least 25 hours a week being mayor. A retired Port Huron city clerk, she said she was a positive person and had the “energy, desire and the time.”

Councilwomen Anita Ashford and Teri Lamb are running to retain their seats.

Several challengers said Councilman Rico Ruiz’s decision not to run again spurred their itch to get involved now. One of them was Jeff Pemberton, who was the first to file to run for council and has been attending City Council meetings for the past year.

“I asked him out to breakfast and I picked his brain,” Pemberton said. “I don’t want for one minute to pretend I have all the answers and I don’t want to make it sound like current council hasn’t.”

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Port Huron City Council candidate Jeff Pemberton speaks at a candidate forum Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018 at the Municipal Office Center in Port Huron. Pemberton, a local marketing executive, was appointed to the Port Huron Housing Commission in 2018. (Photo11: Brian Wells/Times Herald)

Asked about their priorities, candidates delved into housing, rentals, home ownership and bringing more residents to the city. A Port Huron Housing Commission member, Pemberton said, “I just want to be a part of really assisting that going forward.”

Pemberton and other candidates with backgrounds in marketing talked about making Port Huron more attractive.

Pemberton, also a former teacher, is a marketing executive for Ross Medical Education Center, Lisa Beedon is marketing and communications director for Lake Huron Medical Center, and Jon Hardman is an event producer and independent marketing contractor.

Hardman talked about leveraging existing resources to combat the city’s declining population and that officials should think of how they do business with other communities versus just “doing business in Port Huron.” Beedon made a reference to Kevin Costner and “Field of Dreams” and said it would take capitalizing on the good momentum the city has going and working with neighboring communities.

Furthering Port Huron’s already positive developments was a common theme for the candidates.

Then, council candidates were asked, “If you build it, they will come, but where will they park?”

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Port Huron City Council candidate Anita Ashford speaks at a candidate forum Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018 at the Municipal Office Center in Port Huron. Ashford has previously served two terms on the city council and is the current mayor pro tem.(Photo11: Brian Wells/Times Herald)

Both Lamb and Ashford talked about steps the city’s already taking, although they may not be able to divulge confidential details yet. Lamb also said people need to get used to walking, adding, “I know it’s not ideal in the wintertime, but there are lots.”

Candidates seemed to agree that it may not be the problem that people believe it is.

“What a great problem to have,” Hardman said. “It’s a problem that I think is hiding only on Facebook and also on TalkBack.”

Beedon added, “I love this problem. … The fact that we are having to talk and we’re becoming a walkable community, I think that’s a great problem.”

Bob Mosurak, who runs his own home improvement business, said, “In my opinion, we don’t have a parking problem so much as we have a walking problem.” He said people may want Port Huron to be like communities such as Royal Oak, where business is busy, but they don’t want to walk like they do in Royal Oak.

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Port Huron City Council candidate Bob Mosurak speaks at a candidate forum Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018 at the Municipal Office Center in Port Huron. Mosurak, a former Port Huron Housing Commission member who runs his own home improvement business, is one of eight candidates vying for a seat in the council.(Photo11: Brian Wells/Times Herald)

Pemberton agreed. “I have never not had a parking spot downtown,” he said, adding he was initially shocked about the perception of the issue. Rather, he said the city’s downtown has “micro-parking problems,” like around Sperry’s Moviehouse on busy nights.

Marissa Williams was the only candidate to advocate for the idea of considering a parking structure near businesses that are heavily utilized.

“I believe in the potential of Port Huron,” Williams, a 24-year-old law student, said. “A lot of my experience, it comes from my education. I’ve been a part of many projects and I want to bring my skills back home. … The time is now for the city to invest in our youth.”

Another theme throughout the night was the number of rentals in Port Huron.

When asked about making homes more affordable and whether there were too many rentals, Arthur Payne, a former mayoral candidate and founder of Toys for Kids, said, “I have some rental properties myself. They can get into some financing.”

Both Ashford and Lamb also encouraged utilization of the city’s existing programs in housing.

Their answers were similar to when talking about attracting new residents.

“We have a lot of development that has taken place,” Ashford said. “… I think we have to promote ourselves a little more. …We’re doing all the right things. I think we have to close in and connect the dots.”

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Port Huron City Council candidate Teri Lamb speaks at a candidate forum Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018 at the Municipal Office Center in Port Huron. Lamb has served almost two years on the city counil as a mid-term appointee.(Photo11: Brian Wells/Times Herald)

Lamb added that could also mean further investments to public safety and parks and recreation. She said she’d been a big advocate for the city’s 2017 tax proposals for the two areas that were approved by votes. Those things mean better services, she said, and should mean more residents.

And the city, Lamb said, could encourage further use of its Urban Pioneer program, which assists first-time homebuyers with down payments.

Candidates in both races covered blight enforcement and unfunded liabilities, or the city’s legacy costs to pay retirees’ pension and health care benefits.

Almost all of them talked about City Manager James Freed’s presentation Monday night about a corrective action plan the city is required to submit to the state.

Worden and Beedon pointed to the long-term plan to pay down the debt by up to 60 percent by 2027.

“We actually have 20 years total to be at 100 percent,” Worden said. “I’m going to tell you as mayor, we’re going to have to engage everyone involved to see if we can come up with any additional contributions.”

Gurnsey recalled unfunded liabilities was something he ran on as a council candidate several years ago, adding the city’s addressing it was part of the reason he stepped away from running for anything again until now.

He said, “Mr. Freed’s got a good plan.”

Smith said the city needs to be creative about finding new sources of revenue where possible. Gurnsey’s hope to remove the city’s income tax, he said, means losing $6 million of income. Either way, he said whoever wins as mayor should figure out a way to pay back the employees who’ve made sacrifices to help lessen the burden of the city’s legacy costs.

Repp said the city has lost $23 million in state revenue sharing, adding revenue is “one of the things we have to look into. I doubt that’s ever going to come back,” she said. “… There may be a chance we get to bond in the future to pay off some of our unfunded liabilities. That might open it up.”

The mayor also agreed with Smith that employees have made sacrifices to help, and she said that they recently got raises after several years without them to help “compensate (for) what they’ve given up and what’s been taken away.”

Pemberton broke away from other council candidates’ reaffirmation of the city’s existing plan, adding he, too, thought the city could find “creative solutions” in handling its finances overall. He pointed to the city’s privatization for some tree serves — retaining forestry staff but getting help in dangerous tree removal — as an example.

Finding a balance between good enforcement and working better with residents was a common response to the question about blight enforcement.

Repp expressed confidence in the system the city’s present system of fix-it tickets, which allows property owners to address issues before facing monetary penalties.

Others like Mosurak said it was about helping to bolster residents who own a home. “I want it to be a sense of pride for them,” he said.

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Port Huron City Council candidate Marissa Williams speaks at a candidate forum Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018 at the Municipal Office Center in Port Huron. Williams, a current student at Western Michigan University's Cooley Law School, is one of eight candidates running for a seat on the council.(Photo11: Brian Wells/Times Herald)

On opioids, council candidates said it was a crisis that local stakeholders should continue to push forward on finding solutions for those in recovery. Lamb brought up the city’s addressing recovery or sober-living homes, Pemberton said he was a “much bigger fan” of finding solutions that have worked elsewhere and treating it as a “community problem” versus a drug problem, and Williams advocated for better awareness of the issue itself.

Contact Jackie Smith at (810) 989-6270 or jssmith@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @Jackie20Smith.